A newly discovered comet is racing toward a mid-December rendezvous
with the sun — a rendezvous that it will likely not survive.
The comet is categorized by astronomers as a "sungrazer"
and it is destined to do just that; literally graze the surface of the
sun (called the photosphere) and pass through the sun's intensely hot
corona, where temperatures have been measured at upwards of 3.6-million
degrees Fahrenheit (2-million degrees Celsius).